Raise your Leadership level with these leadership books
Leadership and management skills are needed in organisations in order to accomplish their goals. Management is often described as the process that keeps organisations running, while leadership is the task of inspiring and motivating employees. Key dimensions in successful leaders include the ability to create a vision, thinking strategically, building influential internal and external networks, the courage to make tough decisions, and others.
Learn more on how to be one by reading some of the best leadership books as recommended below.
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The Suite Spot by John Jeffcock provides useful insights on what today’s C-suite looks like and how it is evolving. It is a fascinating compendium of wisdom that has been sourced from hundreds of leading executives over a period of 20 years and has been collated into a portfolio of tools and anecdotes.
It provides unique guidance on how to break into the C-Suite, and then how to be successful once you get there. Through a unique combination of models, case studies, tables, images, and key learnings from each chapter, the book provides and illustrates practical lessons in a meaningful way.
Overall, this is well written and highly recommended book for leadership teams, potential and existing C-suite executives. Navigate with the help of this book to the top as it guide you in reaching, leading and delivering the C-suite.
This book by Daniel Goleman is the 25th-anniversary edition of the number one, multi-million copy international bestseller that shared with us why emotional intelligence is more important than IQ.
The author argues that IQ is too narrow and that our emotions play a major role in thought, decision-making, and individual success. From new insights, Goleman shows precisely how emotional intelligence can be nurtured and strengthened in all of us.
With emotional intelligence, you will gain the qualities that mark people who excel, whose relationships flourish, who can navigate difficult conversations, who become stars in the workplace.
Overall, a great and useful book to have if you want to be more successful in your personal and business life.
In The Heart of Business, Hubert Joly – author and Former Chairman and CEO of Best Buy shares the philosophy behind the resurgence of Best Buy. Throughout the book, he effectively uses memorable stories, lessons, and practical advice, all drawn from his own personal transformation from a hard-charging McKinsey consultant to a leader who believes in human magic.
The key lessons shared by the author include: pursue a noble purpose, put people at the center of the business, create an environment where every employee can blossom, and treat profit as an outcome, not the goal.
The Heart of Business is a timely and important book for leaders ready to abandon old paradigms and lead with purpose and humanity. Every leader can gain useful insights and achieve extraordinary positive outcomes by putting people and purpose at the heart of the business.
The authors highlighted five key leadership intelligences (The 5Qs) which high performing leaders need to simultaneously employ in order to achieve transformational change. These are:
· IQ (cognitive intelligence): a leader’s ability to acquire deductive abilities and draw together contrasting strands of information;
· EQ (emotional intelligence): a leader’s ability to understand and manage both their own emotions and those of others;
· PQ (political intelligence): a leader’s ability to navigate a way forward through diverse stakeholder agendas while ensuring continued engagement with critical players;
· RQ (resilience quotient): the capacity of a leader to emotionally sustain high performance under continued pressure and adversity; and
· MQ (moral intelligence): a leader’s ability to understand their own value system and draw on this to determine the moral boundaries of individuals, teams and the organization.
This concise book provide useful insights and action points for leaders to improve on these intelligences for their organisation success.
- Artificial intelligence, Analytics, Business Model Innovation, Innovation, Design Thinking, Strategy – these are some of the most important topics that business leaders need to understand and know more in order to create competitive advantage for their organisation. Gain useful insights in all these topics and more from HBR’s 10 Must Reads Technology and Strategy Collection which isa a seven book set consisting of:
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on AI, Analytics, and the New Machine Age
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Business Model Innovation
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Platforms and Ecosystems
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Innovation
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Design Thinking
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy
- HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Strategy, Vol. 2
This is indeed a great collection of books for any leaders, managers or executives to up their knowledge and game in strategy and technology.
HBR’s 10 MUST READS For CEOs is a useful book for any CEO who wants to be more effective. Articles featured are considered to be the best ones to help you toggle between long- and short-term views, manage risk and innovation, and cultivate productive relationships with your staff and your board.
Articles that will inspire you includes:
- Managing Your Innovation Portfolio
- Leading Change
- Reinventing Your Business Model
- Leadership is a Conversation
- Strategic Intent
- The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution
- Managing Risks: A New Framework
Overall, this is indeed an insightful book that experienced, new or up-and-coming CEOs should read and have.
This book tells the story of the man who transformed Singapore into a thriving metropolis it is now.
Organised in six chapters, this pictorial is a snapshot of Mr Lee’s life from his early childhood to his entry into the politics in the 1950s, through the nation building years that transformed this country into what it is today.
The book has over 35,000 photographs selected from a wide range of sources, including Lee’s personal albums,
This pictorial is both a visual record and a celebration of a successful leader on his remarkable journey and story.
The book is published by Straits Times Press.
The authors of this book “Beyond Great” after distilling the study of hundreds of companies and interviews with dozens of business leaders came out with nine core strategies for winning in the 21st century in with these book chapters:
Chapter 1: Do Good, Grow Beyond.
Chapter 2: Stream it, Don’t Ship it.
Chapter 3: Refine your global game
Chapter 4: Engineer an Ecosystem
Chapter 5: Flex how you make it.
Chapter 6: Let the Data Run Through It
Chapter 7: Get Focused, Fast and Flat
Chapter 8: Thrive with Talent Chapter 9: Embrace Always-on Transformation.
This insightful and useful book provides leaders with a new set of strategies and rules about what it takes to bring their organization global and go beyond great.
The Fearless Organization offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success. While it’s is great to have and retain quality talent – what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind?
- Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance
- Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
- Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization.
The Fearless Organization helps you bring about this important and most critical transformation.
The Leadership Odyssey: From Darkness to Light is a useful book on becoming an effective leader. It shares insights on toxic and virtuous leaders. Case studies, coupled with interviews with senior business leaders will greatly help enhance your understanding of what leadership is and how it is practised.
The book strongly brings out that it is possible to become a virtuous leader, only by integrating the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects, which constitute the core elements of leadership.
Overall, a good book to read on becoming a virtuous leader.
The authors in this handbook distill proven ideas and frameworks about leadership from Harvard Business Review, interviews with senior executives, and their own experience in the field–all to help rising leaders stand out and have a big impact.
In the HBR Leader’s Handbook you’ll find:
- Concise explanations of proven leadership frameworks
- In-depth case studies of senior leaders
- Step-by-step guidance to help you understand and start implementing six core leadership practices: building a unifying vision, developing a strategy, getting great people on board, focusing on results, innovating for the future, and leading yourself.
In Leading Matters, Chairman of Alphabet, John L. Hennessy shares the core elements of leadership that helped him become a successful tech entrepreneur, esteemed academic, and venerated administrator.
Each chapter in Leading Matters looks at valuable elements that have shaped Hennessy’s career in practice and philosophy. Chapter topics include Humility, Authenticity and Trust, Leadership as Service, Empathy, Courage, Collaboration, Innovation, Intellectual Curiosity, Storytelling, and Legacy.
This book is essential reading for those tasked with leading any complex enterprise in the academic, not-for-profit, or for-profit sector.
Charles A. O’Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman explain how shrewd organizations have used an ambidextrous approach to solve their own innovator’s dilemma.
Drawing on a vast research program and over a decade of helping companies to innovate, the authors present a set of practices to guide firms as they adopt ambidexterity. Top-down and bottom-up leaders are key to this process. Readers will come away with a new understanding of how to improve their existing businesses through efficiency, control, and incremental change, while also seizing new markets where flexibility, autonomy, and experimentation rule the day.
This is a important book for leaders who wish to disrupt and bring success for their organizations.
Legendary Silicon Valley visionary and one of the world’s greatest business leaders, John Chambers shares the playbook and philosophy that transformed Cisco into a global tech titan and now inspire a new generation of leaders.
He’s outlasted and outmaneuvered practically every rival that ever tried to take Cisco on-Nortel, Lucent, Alcatel, IBM, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard, to name a few-and turned more than 10,000 employees into millionaires, more than any company in history. In collaboration with award-winning journalist Diane Brady, Chambers shares the stories and strategies that helped his company win again and again through multiple market shifts.
Are you a future-ready leader? This book on the future of leadership shares exclusive insights from the world’s top CEOs on this topic. After reading it, you will:
- Learn the greatest trends impacting the future of leadership and their implications
- Understand the top skills and mindsets that leaders of the future will need to possess and how to learn them
- Change your perception of who a leader is and what leadership means
- Tackle the greatest challenges that leaders of the future will face
- Become a future-ready leader
This is the book that you, your team, and your organization must to read in order to lead in the future of work.
We are faced with challenges everyday. Instead of looking at problems author Dr. Rick Goodman book “The Solutions Oriented Leader” will be a great read for transforming your leadership approach. The book will lead you through the everyday challenges of the modern workplace while providing you with easy-to-implement solutions to achieve world-class results!
The Solutions Oriented Leader shows you how to:
- Implement transformational leadership tools to help you achieve balance in business and your life
- Utilize communication systems that increase employee engagement and workflow
- Develop a positive attitude that motivates your team and increases retention
- Handle conflict and manage workplace burnout
Coaching and mentoring has gain much attention in Asia-Pacific region over the recent years. “Coaching and Mentoring in the Asia Pacific” is the first book to put coaching and mentoring into an Asia Pacific context – exploring the challenges, benefits, approaches and practices.
The authors has provided content that highlights how organizations in the Asia Pacific Region can make effective use coaching and mentoring in cost-effective, culturally relevant ways. Overall a useful book for leaders, coaches and any practitioners planning to work on coaching and mentoring in the Asia Pacific.
Conclusion
We will be featuring more top leadership books here which could help you on your leadership journey.